Where's the Frappato?

Some harder to find wines...

Export Director Penny Murray pulls out a few bottles at Planeta, Ulmo, Sicily.

One of my favourite wines from one of my favourite producers is the Planeta Frappato, from their vineyards in Vittoria, in Sicily’s Southeast corner. An allotment of the wine regularly comes to Ontario every year, often in the spring or summer. Warm weather suits its remarkably light and tangy fruit character of wines made with this indigenous Sicilan grape.

A few weeks ago, I was delighted to learn that the 2022 Frappato was on its way. The newsletter from Planeta’s Ontario importing agent, Noble Estates, told me to look out for it at the LCBO Vintages shops. Great, I thought, I’ll just mosey down the street to my local provincial alcohol retail monopoly outfit and grab a few bottles on the release date.

I live half a block away from the Summerhill store, one of the Liquor Control Board’s biggest shops, with an extensive Vintages section that takes up three entire rooms of the old Canadian Pacific Railway station in which it is housed. Surely, I assumed, the Planeta Frappato would arrive there in sufficient numbers to slake the thirst of midtown Toronto winos, as it had for all the years before that I could remember.

I think you know where this is going…

There was no Frappato at Summerhill this week. There was, and is, a fair amount of Frappato in Vaughn, Ottawa, and Kingston, and a few bottles far flung around Toronto. I would have to journey to get my Frappato fix.

Out of curiosity, I asked Joe Alberti at Noble Estates, how the decision to stock which stores is made. He explained that re-ordered wines like the Planeta Frappato, which come through the LCBO every year, are allocated by sales history. Sounds logical, but in my experience in past years the Frappato at Summerhill always sells out pretty quickly (with my help).

There is, Joe added, also some “manager discretion involved”. Ah, right: the monopoly. Was my local manager on holiday when the Frappato orders were made? Does he/she/they/them just not like Frappato? Did the Ottawa managers form a secret cartel and snatch up all the Frappato before sleepy Summerhill got around to filling an order? Did the St. Lawrence Market and Avenue Road and Lawrence managers enter into a Laurentian pact to squeeze out mid-town Italophile eonophiles?

We’ll never know.

Planeta vineyards at Ulmo, near Sambuca di Sicilia, April 2015.

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WINE RECOMMENDATIONS

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Planeta Frappato 2022

Price: $22.95
Channel: (Some) LCBO Vintages

Producer: Planeta
Country: Italy
Region: Sicily
Appellation: Vittoria DOC

Grapes: Frappato
Alcohol by Volume: 13%
Sugar Content: 3 grams per litre

What is this miraculous grape, Frappato? It comes from vineyards geographically closer to Africa than to Rome, and yet has the character of a cool climate light red mixed with the profound fruit profile of a Mediterranean food wine: cherries, raspberries and maybe a hint of strawberry. Tutti frutti.

Planeta are masters of this rare Sicilian grape, and adopt a decidedly less is more attitude to making it, as one would expect with any elegant ingredient. It’s all stainless steel, and pure fruit. This is a wine made for summer and made for the summer table of plates of salads, all manner of barbecued meats, and even (if you’re lucky) fresh caught fish. There should be a picture of the Paneta Frappato in the Wino’s Dictionary (TM) under the entry for ‘Versatile’.

The only trouble with the Planeta Frappato 2022 is getting a hold of a bottle (see above). I recommend hunting one down at the address below while they and the summertime lasts.

https://www.lcbo.com/en/planeta-frappato-vittoria-2018-508655

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Alta Alella PB 2020

Price: Somewhere between $25-$30
Channel: CRUSHABLE / The Living Vine

Producer: Alta Alella
Country: Spain
Region: Catalonia
Appellation: Alella DO

Grapes: Pansa Blanca (Xarello)
Alcohol by Volume: 12%
Sugar Content: N/A (bone dry)

I came into a bottle of the Alta Alella Pansa Blanca 2020 as part of a mix case offered by Laura Milne’s CRUSHABLE wine club recently. (I wrote about Laura and her Toronto-based wine club at The Hub in June here.) The club may or may not have or have access to any more, the original offer has expired. Some Googling reveals that The Living Vine agency, which only deals in organic wines, is offering the 2023 vintage by the case at $27.95 a bottle here.

So, like, the Planeta Frappato, getting hold of a bottle of this wine, in our market, might be complicated. Too bad, because the bottle of 2020 I opened this week was lovely, and a reminder that Catalonia makes more than bubbles (Cava) and big reds (Priorat).

The Alella DO is more or less a suburb of Barcelona, and I can imagine this wine was engineered for the seafood found along the Costa Brava and Mediterranean Spain. Pansa Blanca is another name for the Xarello grape, which dominates the production of Cava sparkling wine, and hold great freshness and acidity.

Despite being four years old, the 2020 PB was a bit tight at first and benefited from a little air. Then, refreshing, mouth watering fruit: green apple and lemon over a slightly grapefruit pithy bitter finish. The wine is decidedly moreish.

https://www.crushable.club/
https://www.thelivingvine.ca/products/pansa-blanca

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